Inside Photoshop

The do’s and don’ts of successful digital photo copying

by Jim Whitcomb

Photographers and photo technicians have always needed to make copies. They’ve copied everything from documents, artifacts, and evidence, to antique photos, as shown in Figure A. But though the kinds of items they copied may have varied, the objective has always been the same: to create a photo that’s as visually true to the original as possible. Nowadays, most people use a digital scanner for copy work. They usually do a fine job, mostly thanks to software that allows the user to adjust the image-capture properties.

But, there are times when you just can’t use a scanner, especially to copy large or very heavy objects. For those times, the tried-and-true copy method is still a very practical technique to use. Though you may now use a digital camera instead of a traditional camera for copy work, the mechanics have remained the same. Let’s now take a look at a few copying do’s and don’ts you should follow to aid you with your work.

Figure A:

Copy setup techniques

Before digital scanners, there were two fixed-type copy setups, which still are widely used: reproduction cameras and copy stands. Reproduction cameras, a.k.a. repro cameras, are mainly used by the commercial printing[…]